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'Carol of the Bed Intruder' becomes YouTube hit

December 17, 2010 : Liberty University News Service

Liberty University’s Vision Ministries’ parody of the most-watched YouTube video of 2010 is burning up the Internet.

Vision edited some of the words and then added some a capella and holiday flare to Antoine Dodson and the Gregory Brothers’ “Bed Intruder” at Liberty’s Coffeehouse on Dec. 10. Videos of the performance were soon posted to YouTube by students, but after comments about poor audio, Liberty officials decided to post the university-filmed version of the song to Liberty's YouTube channel.

(View the original Antoine Dodson interview here and the musical parody that followed soon after here. Vision's version is above and here.)

Within a week, Liberty's video has captured more than 430,000 views on YouTube and has captured the attention of media outlets across the country, Comedy Central and numerous other bloggers. The video also has cracked YouTube’s top 50 viewed and rated videos of the week.

Chancellor Jerry Falwell, Jr. said NBC has contacted the school about showing the video on “The Today Show” and possibly “America’s Got Talent” later this year.

“It shows the power of the Internet,” Falwell said. “When my father started out he had to buy air time to spread the word about Liberty.”

Tiffany Carter, seminary leader for Vision, said the story behind the “Carol of the Bed Intruder” is a simple one. The group was listening to “Bed Intruder” while returning from a trip in South Carolina in September. The group’s iPod battery died and one of the students started singing the song “with a very choir-like voice.”

“Without missing a beat, the rest of the team joined in with harmonies and laughter as we were singing the choir version that you heard in the first part of our song [in the YouTube video],” Carter said.

The group then decided to take their rendition of the song to Coffeehouse tryouts. Coffeehouse is a once-a-semester talent show sponsored by Liberty’s Student Activities Office.

“The ‘Carol of the Bed Intruder’ proved to be a real highlight of Christmas Coffeehouse,” said Student Activites Director Chris Misiano. “Each semester, I am more and more impressed with the creativity our student body exhibits.”

Carter said Vision members “had no idea that this would become as big as it has. We are flattered, but there is no one person who started it all. We really do everything together.”

“I promise if you spend any time at all with our ministry, you will see Christ shine all over these students,” she said.

Falwell said the video helps break a stereotype about Christians not being able to show a side of humor.

“It’s great that the world is able to see that Christian young people can have fun just like everybody else,” he said. “It lets others see that stereotypes about Christians are just not true.”